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It’s A Puppet!

Today there has been a bit of hub-bub on Twitter, and a few online news sites, about a crocodile that has been filmed, merrily swimming around some houseboats in London.

If you watch the video it will take you all of a couple of seconds to realise that it is not a crocodile. I mean, it looks like a crocodile. Sort of. Mainly just the head. But it doesn’t take Steve Irwin (luckily) to realise that it’s not in any way, shape or form real.

Aside from nothing else, the way it holds its head does not change throughout the whole thing. Not to mention the way it casually just turns through 90 degrees with seemingly no effort, on the spot. Which, when you’re a head attached to a long, muscly body, isn’t going to happen.

When you’re a plastic head, or similar, on a radio-controlled boat however… well, that’s a different kettle of fish.

There’s a quote in the Mirror from a lady who says her children like to play in the area near where the crocodile was spotted. She says, now, that she can’t let her children play there because clearly there’s a chance they’ll be devoured by this creature.

The footage comes from a man who started filming it when he saw two men staring down at it as it floated around Chelsea Harbour. Two men who were, undoubtedly, steering it as it nosed around the houseboats.

That thing about when you hear hoof beats think horses not zebras, should probably also be applied to when you see crocodile heads bobbing around the Thames.

Maybe this is the job I should get into. Is there a position for someone to travel around and just slap sense into people when they conjure up crap like this. I suppose if I was doing that as a living, I could expand that into having a word with all the people who post messages about having people they know involved in any and every crisis that occurs just because they like the attention.

I’m willing to bet, probably, by tomorrow one of them will have been bitten and/or eaten by the crocodile.

What amused me the most about this whole thing was that, apparently, the police had been called to the croc, but later said that it had nothing to do with them. And then the RSPCA chimed in and said that it was a dangerous animal and the police totally should be dealing with it.

It’s one of those “not my job, mate” moments on a grand scale. Who can wash their hands quickest when it comes to dealing with out-of-place crocodiles?